Grateful Dead
Road Trips, Vol. 2, No. 2

Carousel Ballroom - San Francisco

[February 14, 1968]

Forty years ago, bands were not granted a lot of time to plot their next
move. Instead, they were expected to craft new albums, at least annually, like
clockwork. Nevertheless, record label executives also made attempts, once they
latched onto an outfit, to understand, nurture, and expand the talent pool. The
Grateful Dead found a mentor of sorts in Joe Smith, the high-ranking official
who had brought the group to Warner Bros.í attention. Although he was frustrated
with the ridiculously slow progress that the Grateful Dead had been making with
its sophomore set, Smith gave the ensemble the authorization it needed to follow
through on an experimental plan to sculpt the affair from an array of concert
and studio recordings. It is quite possible that if he had grown impatient with
the Grateful Deadís anarchic tendencies and pressured it to complete Anthem of the Sun before it was ready, the collectiveís development would have been
stifled, perhaps fatally. It is from within this cauldron of creativity that the
music on Road Trips, Vol. 2, No. 2 was culled.

Much as its subtitle suggests, the heart of Road Trips, Vol. 2, No. 2
is the show that the Grateful Dead staged on its own, without help from local
promoter Bill Graham, at San Franciscoís Carousel Ballroom on February 14, 1968.
Even so, in touching upon four other concerts that had been held during the
preceding weeks, the collectionís bonus tracks are equally important to
understanding the rapid maturation of the bandís artistic process. In effect,
the Grateful Dead had a wealth of ideas that it wanted to explore, ones which
would allow the group to move beyond the folk and blues motifs that previously
had served as the primary focal points of its output.

Working on stage and in the studio, the Grateful Dead had begun to assemble
and hone a fresh batch of material during the final months of 1967. The
following January, armed with a better understanding of how it wanted to present
its new compositions, the group embarked upon a tour of the Pacific Northwest,
the purpose of which was to create the concert recordings that would feed into
the completion of Anthem of the Sun. For certain, this undertaking was an
immense gamble, but the band succeeded in bringing its ambitious project to
fruition.

In early 1968, for obvious reasons, the Grateful Deadís repertoire was still
rather limited. As a result, there was a lot of redundancy to the shows it
performed in Oregon, Washington, and northern California. On night after night,
the same songs appeared, often in the same order. Each tune also followed a
basic template. Dark Star, which appears three times on Road Trips, Vol. 2, No. 2, eventually became a vehicle for the bandís open-ended
improvisational excursions. Here, however, it adheres tightly to its rapid,
rhythmic undercurrent.

Over the course of the tour, thematic concepts from Dark Star, The
Other One, Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks), and Viola Lee Blues
were used interchangeably. Therefore, whenever the Grateful Dead embarked upon
an extended instrumental interlude, it frequently fell into a blues-based
routine. Despite the fact that the tunes were wholly enthralling, they typically
followed familiar, repeating patterns. Through these iterations and diversions,
however, the Grateful Dead developed a better sense of itself. The band learned
that it didnít always need to attack its songs aggressively, and it increasingly
began to show the kind of restraint that allowed it to walk the line between
tension and release.

Even within its compositions, the Grateful Dead was pushing its boundaries
outward as it sought to expand upon the ideas it had presented in Viola Lee
Blues and Morning Dew. A jazzier subtext had infiltrated its
approach. Most notably, the shifting time signatures of Dave Brubeckís Time Out shaded Phil Leshís new composition The Eleven. In a similar
fashion, Leshís formal music training weighed heavily upon New Potato Cabooseís
symphonic ambience.

By the time that it took the stage at the Carousel Ballroom on Valentineís
Day, the Grateful Dead had turned the corner and solidified its identity.
Spurred, perhaps, by the passing of its cosmic flight navigator Neal Cassady, to
whom the show was dedicated, the band utilized the occasion to take Anthem of
the Sun for a test drive. Although the members of the Grateful Dead probably
didnít realize it at the time, they also spent the first portion of the show
working through the sequence of tracks that eventually would compose its
monumental concert recording Live/Dead, albeit with one difference: a
rampaging rendition of China Cat Sunflower was positioned in the slot
that later would be filled by St. Stephen.

Without a doubt, the Grateful Dead gave a performance that was feisty and
aggressive. Yet, within the cataclysmic charge of Thatís It for the Other One
as well as the militaristic cadence of Spanish Jam ó which, at times,
bore a striking resemblance to Jefferson AirplaneísWhite Rabbit ó there
also were plenty of subtler moments that revealed the intangible, unspoken
communication that bound the groupís members together. Despite the equipment
malfunctions that left Pigpenís vocals buried within the sonic assault of Alligator and Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks), the music on Road Trips, Vol. 2, No.2 rarely falters. Blending youthful exuberance with
increasing maturity, the Grateful Dead set aside its initial struggle to move
forward and brushed past this critical juncture of its young career. In other
words, much like Birth of the Dead, Road Trips, Vol. 2, No. 2
provides an insightful glimpse at how the Grateful Dead established a firm
footing for its future flights.